Jon Rendell's photostream  

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“Shadow Boxer”

I was born into an auteur/photog family in Melbourne, Australia in 1957. My grandfather owned a Paillard Bolex 16mm movie camera in the 50s and 60s. My father always had his Braun 35mm loaded with Kodachrome 25 or Ektachrome (for special vacations) and when I was 8 my parents gave me their old Kodak Box Brownie. I took to it like the proverbial duck to water. I shot birthday parties, friends at school, our vacations.

At high school I learned basic darkroom techniques and decided I had to have my own darkroom. Everyone in the family knew that on certain evenings, the kitchen (my makeshift darkroom) was out of bounds.

In the 70s, although I majored in ceramics at art college, my minor was photography where I had the sublime pleasure of being tutored by renowned Australian photographer Athol Shmith.

From early days I was always captivated by the shadows I saw in life and in photographs. It was actually Athol who one day selected one of my negatives as an example of perfect exposure and development. I cringed because his ever-present cigarette was dangling dangerously close to the negative as he held it aloft to the class.

That photo depicted an old timber railway station (Alphington — since rebuilt). It had an unusually shaped shadow across its facade. To this day I cannot tell you what made that shadow, but from that day forward I found myself wired to focusing upon the transitory, abstract shapes that come and go with the available light.

In an effort to make fine art photography attainable (even in a recession), Jon has produced a range of personally signed photos at just $60 each that have the added advantage of fitting directly into Bed Bath and Beyond framing kits. The "democratization of fine art photography"

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” Diane Arbus